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Friday, June 28, 2013

E.H.U.D: Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Alice stood in a crowd surrounding
City Hall, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of others enraged at the
death of Raoul Omerta. With his death,
the “Defend the Defenders” movement had found a martyr. As warm bodies moved around her, Alice felt
the city alive and angry on that cold Sunday afternoon. There was hope that
they might achieve something, that Raoul's death might not be in vain. Just what they would accomplish... she had no
idea.

The shadow of a man passed over her
and she looked up to the bronze gaze of William Penn staring down on the mass
of people assembled. What would he have
wanted in all this? He was a founding
father after all, someone who wanted freedom from tyranny, equality for
all. What would he think of the police's
actions, of the government he had helped to create?

Wait. No, he wasn't one of the founders, was
he? Alice couldn't remember; it wasn't
something that usually came up in her daily life.

She tore her attention away from
the statue and focused on a tiny figure
standing in the archway beneath the Hall's tower, blasting the crowd with a
megaphone.

“Is this the way we treat opposing
voices? Is this the way we treat young
people looking out for their futures?
No! No!” The crowd burst in with a chorus of “No!”s
and some of the speaker's next words were lost on Alice. “—can't pretend this isn't happening! They took their rights, they abused them in
the name of foreign policy, then they silenced any voice of protest! So we start yelling! Yelling 'til our voices are too loud to
silence!”

The crowd roared with a concerted,
animal yell, Alice shouting herself hoarse right along with the others. While she yelled she looked up and saw
several tiny figures on the observation platform at Penn's feet. They walked back and forth, surveying the
crowd. Light glinted on what appeared to
be weapons. She shivered and looked
away. Of course there would be police
here; why should she be surprised?

As the latest round of yells died
down she crouched to pick up the sign she had thrown together before rushing
out to join the budding demonstration.
It featured a crudely-drawn death's-head EHUD helmet beneath the slogan
“Who Defended Raul?” She hoisted it over
her head and began waving it, feeling some satisfaction as a forest of other
signs grew up in the moments after hers.

She stood taller, pushing up on the
tips of her toes, and looked around at all the signs that now floated above the
heads of the crowds. The speaker in the
archway was launching into another rant, but Alice was distracted by a sudden
movement in the forest of signs. The
outer edges were rippling, distorting her vision of them. As quickly as they had come up the signs
began to come crashing down, like trees caught in a pyroclastic flow. Renewed yelling followed the felling of the
signs, though this chorus was more vitriolic, more focused on the here and now.
The police weren't on the observation deck alone.

The police presence on outer edge
sent a physical ripple of agitation through the crowd. Alice felt herself caught up in the
compression wave, bodies behind packing her in with bodies before. As the wave passed and she was pulled into
the trough she lost control of her sign. It whacked someone on the shoulder and disappeared.

The man she hit fell backwards into
her as a reflection of the wave pulsed past them. She tried to push him back up but was almost
immediately shoved forward into him as another wave, the strongest of them all,
pushed in from the outer edges. She
waited for it to pass but as soon as it had another wave, then another, pounded
in from behind. Moments later waves from
the front reached her, and she realized that something must have sparked police
action.

She managed to free her arm and
clear enough room to pull out her mobile.
News-feeds flicked by on the screen, and she stopped when she saw a live
video stream coming from high up in the Municipal Services building. It showed the crowd, a cumulatively dark
brown amoeba stretched over the streets around City Hall. The crowd disappeared past the side of the MS building to the
north, but stayed constrained to the width of the Hall east and west. A thin border of blue defined the edge of the
amoeba on the west, but to the east and stretching north the border had broken
and become commingled with the brown.
Arms grew from the amoeba, stretching to swallow the bits of blue still
visible. The blue was able to fight
back, small clusters bursting out radially to turn on the now free-floating
arms, swallowing them and leaving the digested remains too weak to threaten the
invading blue organism.

The entirety of the amoeba now
pulsed in a north-easterly direction, along the sightline of William Penn, desperate
to devour the free-moving blue masses.
The blue line to the west, meanwhile, was taking this opportunity to
push in, acting as a semipermeable membrane hemming the amoeba in yet letting
bits of it drift away as—

A foot came down on Alice's right
ankle and she dropped the mobile. The
little black rectangle disappeared among the roiling legs of the crowd, lost
forever. She straightened and stifled a
groan as the pain in her ankle shot up her leg.
A moment later she let out a full scream as the man before her turned,
hitting her alongside her head with his elbow.
He pushed past her, though whether in haste to tangle with the police or
due to pressure from the front of the crowd she could not tell.

She spent a moment rocking back and
forth, supported by the masses around her, and waited for the ringing in her
head to stop.

Someone moved, and she found
herself falling towards a person suddenly wasn't there. She stumbled enough to recover her balance
but was pushed from behind by the eastern side of the crowd trying to escape westward.

Momentum carried her for several
feet, stumbling and fighting for balance, before the force of western movement
was cancelled out by eastern movement.

Okay, enough was enough. Alice knew from watching the Washington riot
earlier in the week that her position here was not a good one; if she wanted to
avoid more injury, she had to get out.
She thought back to what she had seen on her mobile, and decided the
west would be her best chance, as fighting hadn't yet started there. After a few moments of fruitless struggle, free
movement proved near impossible; she was just going to have to wait until the
crowd broke up enough that she could get through. Or she could make her own hole...

In her pocket was a tube of pepper
spray; that should be enough to open a corridor to the outside.

An intense surge of movement from
behind forced her decision, and she pulled out the tube.

“Hey!” she yelled to the man
standing to the west of her. “Let me
out!”

The man tried to shrug, but there
wasn't enough room to perform the gesture properly. “I'm just as stuck as you are!”

“I'm really sorry about this!” The tube came up and leveled at his face.

“Shit!” The man pushed away from her, though it
didn't get him very far. It was enough
to cause ripples, however, and a few moments later a new current pulsed through
the center of the crowd, leading towards the west, towards freedom.

Alice sent the tube back into her
pocket and let the current move her several dozen feet.

She was just starting to think she could
make it out of this all right when the crowd broke around her and she realized
that hostilities had commenced on this side as well. The crowd was forming into clusters, about
ten strong, and facing off against clusters of two or three police officers
decked out in riot gear. She watched in
horror for a moment as a group of men—more like teenagers—wrestled an officer
to the ground and began to beat him with shoes and protest signs. She caught a glimpse of her “Who Defended
Raul” sign coming down on the officer's helmeted head before she looked away.

There was no chance to take
advantage of this opening and escape; a small mob pushed past her and caught
her up. Escaping was useless for now;
police officers hemmed them in on all sides, a microcosm of the greater amoeba.

A woman standing next to Alice
bellowed and charged forward, only to have a truncheon cracked across her
jaw. She fell to her knees, mouth
bleeding, and whipped her arm up into the officer's groin. Despite the heavy padding he had there, he
groaned and slipped down to the woman's level.

Seeing the downed officer, the cluster
surged towards this weak point in the barrier, carrying Alice along with
it. No one seemed to have given a
thought to the downed woman and Alice, now on the outer edge, tripped over her,
sending them all sprawling down into the street.

Alice screamed as someone heavy
landed on her already tender ankle, and she felt it give way under the
weight. She tried to extricate her leg,
but it was pinned under the struggling mass.
She curled in on herself and moaned, tried not to think of the pain.

Footsteps clattered on the pavement
near her head and she looked up to see the remaining police redistributing
themselves around their downed prey.
There was a momentary glimpse of on officer's face, and Alice thought
she recognized him from somewhere. The
moment passed, and the police where upon them.
They swung their truncheons to no rhythm, putting as much force behind
each blow as they could.

The rioters, still pinning Alice to
the street, tried to roll away from the blows but found it impossible amidst
the flailing limbs.

One man, with the seeming fortune
to be near the top of the pile, was able to roll off, stand, and stumble a few
feet before the police focused their attention on him, surrounding him and beating
him back down to the ground.

The others on top of Alice took
this opportunity to make breaks of their own and soon it was just Alice and the
bleeding woman she had tripped over. She
pushed herself to her feet and gasped as she put weight on her ankle. This wasn't good, not good, no...

Nausea tinged her vision as she
looked around, desperate for a viable means of escape. Walk out, past the police, lose herself in
the next few blocks, try to find a cab...

She hobbled away, ignoring the
pained screams from all around her. Not
this, not now...

She was in sight of a few lingering
police on the edge of the perimeter when pain blossomed across the back of her
head, her vision flashed, and then everything went dark...

The family funeral of Raoul Omerta
wasn't until the following Tuesday, but the pastor of St. John the Evangelist
had declared that Sunday mass would be held in the boy's honor. Consequently, thousands of Philadelphians had packed out the church to
pay respects to their martyred brother.

Rachel, being somewhat close to
Raoul, as well as for... other reasons, had insisted that they attend
the memorial. Reggie had declined; he
never felt comfortable in churches, and he needed the sleep after the weekend's
shifts. John agreed to come on the
condition that they arrived early. He
was glad they had; the church was almost full by the time they forced their way
into the back of the sanctuary, and crews of volunteers were hastily erecting
cameras and outdoor screens to convey the proceedings to the overflow.

After what seemed like a hot,
crowded, agitated eternity, the pastor entered, preceded by a column of alter
children, and the congregated mourners stood to sing a hymn. When the pastor had shuffled to the front of
the sanctuary, the singing petered out, and scripture was read.

John tuned it out and stared up
into the vaulted ceiling, tracing out the supports that held the roof
aloft. This was the first time he had
been in a proper, traditional cathedral.
He could appreciate this bit of antique engineering.

After what seemed like hot,
crowded, agitated hours, the pastor stepped aside and a weeping, middle-aged
woman was led in front of the pulpit.
She spoke at some length about her son, interrupted frequently by bursts
of uncontrolled sobbing.

The longer she spoke, the more
uncomfortable Rachel became. “That
wasn't how it happened,” she whispered.
“The police didn't start this. I
did.”

“You had no way of knowing it would
end up like this.”

“That doesn't make it less
stupid. God, everyone's blaming the
police now... That's not going to end
well...”

When Mrs. Omerta was finished, her
husband led her back to her seat then took the stage himself. Unlike his wife, he said little about his
son. Most of what he said was directed
against the police and the government, and John could see where Raoul had
gotten his political streak from.

As Mr. Omerta's tirade wore on,
noise from outside the building grew louder.
At first this was ignored; lunch-time traffic. Then it continued, past the end of Omerta's
speech and into the next. Furious
whispering broke out, drowning out the new speaker.

John saw several people checking
their mobiles; after they had, they rushed out the door. He grabbed Rachel's wrist. “I think we'd better get out of here.”

It took them some time to get to
the door of the church; it seemed as if half of the attendees had all gotten
the urge to flee at the same instant.

Then they stepped out of the church
and into a riot.

A flood of pedestrians was coursing
through the street, funneling through the openings between parked vehicles. Some adventurous souls leapt the obstacles,
leaving broken windshields and shrieking alarms in their wake.

John immediately turned back to the
church, but another group of mourners was already trying to push out, so he and
Rachel were forced into the mob.

By staying on the edge of the crowd
they were able to avoid the worst of the current, and only moved a few dozen
yards.

“What's going on?” Rachel yelled.

“Looks like something's going on at
City Hall!”

A back flow was beginning on the
sidewalks, heading in the direction of Penn Square.

“We need to get out of here!”

The main flow of pedestrians ebbed
for a moment, and John took the opportunity to duck behind a row of parked
cars, dragging Rachel with him. A moment
later the back flow broke into the street proper and managed to reverse the
tide a moment before a phalanx of armored police drew even with the church.

Now that the rush of flight was
over, those wanting to confront the police were pouring in with an even greater
force, trapping John and Rachel.

The inevitable clash of flooding
rioters and damming police occurred in front of the church. A young man with a baseball bat, half running
of his own volition, half pushed by those behind, swung at the leading police
officer. The swing glanced off the
officer's shield, and the officer surged forward, knocking the bat back to
crack into the man's jaw. He fell back
into the crowd, able bodied rioters swarming around him and surrounding the
hapless officer who now found himself surrounded by six enraged men.

He swung his shield at the two in
front of him and his truncheon at the one to his right. The three behind him pushed, knocking him off
balance. These three were themselves
attacked from the rear as the other police engaged, but by then it was too late
for the first officer. Undefended while
he flailed to regain balance, his three remaining attackers stripped him of his
shield and forced him to the ground.

Over the roar of the crowd, John
heard bones crunching.

Rachel sat on the pavement, her
back against the car. “Shit, shit,
shit—it's happening again, they're all going to kill each other, shit shit
shit—”

John ignored her and stood on his
knees to stare over the car in perverse fascination at the chaos erupting
around them. The police pushed forward,
their line becoming diagonal. Those on
the left edge stopped to help their fallen comrade while those on the right
pushed up to engage with fresh rioters.

The rioters, for their part, where
pushing in tighter, coming from somewhere up the street. They must be new, fresh to the battle, as
none of them were coming from the direction of City Hall.

The right edge of the police line
curved as it engaged in combat once more.
This time, they weren't playing defense.
They raised their shields, charged forward, cracking their truncheons
with bone-shattering force against the hands that pushed past the shields.

Several police weren't carrying
truncheons, and instead sprayed the crowd with tear-gas and pepper spray. Rather than discouraging the crowd, it only
made them angrier, and they climbed on top of one another, using each other as springboards
to launch themselves on the police, collapsing individual officers to the
ground, trapped under their shields.
Soon the police line was in disarray, and the rioters were able to
surround the few remaining police and bludgeon them with improvised clubs.

With the street now clear, many
rioters broke ranks and continued down the street in the direction of Penn
Square, though enough remained to ensure that John and Rachel were forced to
remain a while longer.

Just as it looked like the violence
would be over here, a new set of screams erupted from the cluster of rioters
still pacifying the police. One officer
had abandoned his shield and equipped the truncheon of a fallen comrade. He was now using his weapons to perform a
series of swift, surgical strikes on his tormentors, leaving them curled on the
ground, hopefully unconscious, possibly dead.

The flow of movement in the street
slowed as people stopped to see the lone officer, mowing his way through
rioters, always managing to stay one step ahead of the ten or so people who
were up against him.

A large man, at least six feet tall
and armed with a crowbar, pushed his way through the crowd and to the officer,
swinging his weapon and bellowing. The
officer froze, fell into a boxer's stance, twin truncheons held at the
ready. The man swung at the officer's
head, but the officer ducked, sidestepped, swung out his right-hand truncheon
and caught the man in the kidney.

The man grimaced but didn't
slow. He spun to face the officer,
grabbed his helmeted head in a one-armed bear hug, and used his free hand to
bring the crowbar down toward the helmet.
The officer reacted immediately, bringing the right truncheon once more
into the kidney, then the left into the man's groin, then right into the base
of his skull. The crowbar fell and the
left truncheon came up and caught the man below the ear. The officer was free.

More rioters were on him, but he
held his own, twisting and dodging with grace, blocking and striking as if this
were all just an elaborate dance.

Sunlight glanced off the visor of the helmet, and for
just a moment John thought he caught a glimpse of Lucy's fiancé, Shaun. For some reason this terrified him, and he
felt a jolt of nausea run up his spine.

The officer looked up, seeming to know
that frightened eyes were upon him. The
blankness of his helmet locked with John's eyes for a moment, then the
officer—Shaun—disengaged from his attackers and lunged in John's direction.

John reached back for Rachel's arm.

“Ow!”

“We have to go—”

“There's still too many—”

“NOW!”

John turned away from the rapidly
approaching Shaun and ran in the direction of the church.

“Wait!” Rachel was following him now; she latched
onto his sleeve and managed to keep pace as he barreled through rioters.

Sounds of injury and screams of
pain followed behind them.

John pushed ahead, fueled by the
irrational fear that Shaun was gunning for him.
If it even was Shaun, if he even was coming after him
specifically; it could be a stranger, could be a coincidence.

He risked a look over his shoulder
and saw their pursuer hot on their trail, leaping over rioters, knocking down
those he couldn't scale.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“I don't know!” No point loading on more baggage than she
could carry at this stage.

They were coming up on a side
street that was nearly empty; only a few people stood and gawked at the riot,
recording the chaos with their mobiles.
John broke past the final line of rioters, into the emptiness, and
risked a final look back—no one was following them. Police still battled civilians, the violence
still engulfed the streets, but there was no phantom police officer chasing
them.

A girl around Rachel's age
approached them, staring at the screen of the mobile she pointed at them. “What's going on in there? What's it like?”

John, still trying to catch his
breath, pushed the mobile away and trudged down the street.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm going home!”

A moment later he heard Rachel's
footsteps following him to safety.

For the first time in his memory,
John could see stars in the sky over Philadelphia. The usual light that glared from the city had
gone off about half an hour ago, flickering off in miles-wide blocks. Only isolated points burned in the darkness:
hospitals, police stations, buildings supplied by generators.

Fires.

Sky Crest was one of those safe
beacons of civilization. Rachel lay
sleeping on the living room couch, warmed by the glow of the television giving
second-hand accounts of what she had experienced that day.

Shortly before the power had gone
out, the governor had interrupted every television broadcast and informed the
people of Pennsylvania that he was declaring a state of emergency. The National Guard was to be deployed as soon
as humanly possible, and the city of Philadelphia was to be put under martial
law until such a time as the riots could be ended and peace restored.

The announcement only made things
worse.

Sounds of sniffling reached out
from the living room. Rachel was not
taking this well; John knew she felt responsible for this. As much as he wanted to comfort her, he knew
there was some truth to her belief.

He left the window and walked to
the living room. He stood behind the
couch and listened to the news anchor tick off statistics: deaths, arrests,
cost of property damage. Every few
minutes a talking head would appear and wonder where the president was, what he
would do to help. Then would come talk
of Defenders: were they behind this? Was
this the first steps in a mass destabilization campaign?

A toilet flushed, and Reggie walked
into the room. He stood at the edge of
the sunken living room, looking at his daughter, then glanced at John.

"I think I made the right
decision. Did I make the right decision? This isn't a place for a kid.”

John smiled “Or a grandkid.”

Reggie snorted. “You won't let me live this down, will you?”

John shook his head. “You're old, dude. Get used to it.”

Reggie didn't respond for several
seconds. He stepped down into the living
room, approached the couch, and leaned over to stroke Rachel's forehead. “I'm not ready...”

John placed a hand on his brother's
shoulder. “It's a good thing you already
got the tickets.”

"Yeah. I was going to wait a week, but as soon as
mentioned babies, Denise insisted I send Rachel out right away."

“Has anyone told Wayne?”

Reggie stiffened. “Rachel can call him if she wants. It's best if our paths don't cross for a few
more years...”

John nodded.

Reggie sighed and rubbed his neck. “Listen, I've been told that there's an
emergency triage center setting up downstairs.
Apparently this place is owned by the NSA, and he's got local National
Guard diverting wounded overflow here.
So, I'm going to head down and work a bit. Can you tell Rachel what's going on if she
wakes up before I get back?”

John nodded.

“I'll try to keep it under ten
hours. Don't want her to miss her flight.”

John nodded.

Reggie kissed his daughter, then
left.

John stayed next to Rachel a moment
longer, then returned to the window.

As he watched fires spread in the
streets below, heard muffled screams and gunfire, he felt the walls of his normal
life crumbling, letting in some of the chaos that raged outside.